Apparently, this site isn’t going to update itself… and I’ve given it plenty of opportunities. YouTube videos don’t tend to edit themselves either, so I’ve been skipping that step and streaming live. The Mac Mini (late 2014) is actually a decent machine, once you ditch the 1950s hard drive technology for something more solid and stately.

5MB IBM Hard drive from 1956

Moving the OS from a 1TB hard drive to a 256GB SSD with all of my data and the larger programs on an external USB dock with a 5TB drive made a huge difference. The limited RAM becomes less of a bottleneck when it’s swapping to what’s basically slower RAM instead of a steam-powered spindle with ones and zeros chiseled into it.

Following a good 5min HowTo (link is in video description), I had no problem making the upgrade the first time I’ve opened a modern Mac. If you’re moving to a smaller drive than your original, you’ll need to use an imaging utility like SuperDuper! The MacOS recovery boot won’t do it.

I took my time, familiarizing myself with a few types of connectors I’m not experienced with, and it took about an hour. If I were to do it again, I could probably crank it out in 20 minutes. The biggest time saver tip would be that the small power connectors can be just pushed on vertically, it’s not a plugging-in motion like Molex.